The Rat
Duc De Puce (more commonly known as "The Rat") is an antagonist of the Stronghold series. Biography The Rat was raised as an only child in lands belonging to the Puce family. The duke showed his mother favor, ensuring that she never paid taxes and always had enough to get by. One day, a messenger came to the door with some very suprising news. It was revealed that his father was the same Duc de Puce who his mother had once worked for as a serving wench. Due to an unfortunate accident, the entire Puce family had been lost at sea whilst returning from holiday leaving the Rat as next in line to inherit the title of duke. Lacking an education, he turned to Duc Beauregard (The Snake), who governed a neighbouring province, for advice on how to best manage his lands. More than happy to advise the poor fool, Duc Beauregard sent over a handful of his most loyal staff to assist and, thanks to his aid, the Rat now runs a respectful, if impoverished, kingdom. Character The Rat is a highly-strung character with little self-confidence and no capacity to hide this fact. His general jittery nature sometimes gives way to short bursts of spasmodic twitching when he speaks. His relationship with the rodent world has left him flea-ridden giving him a tendency to scratch himself furiously. As yet, his voice has not broken and on a few occasions, when threatened, has been known to scream “Eeeak”. His overall skittishness causes him to rapidly look around in different directions when asked for his opinion. When he finally responds, his speech is often splintered with sporadic “errs”, “ums” and twitches from his upper lip to fill in the pauses. To top it all off, the Rat is a poor judge of character making him easy prey for anyone trying to lure the gullible fool into a trap. He is however, a character with a sense of humour and has an infectious laugh, much like the Pig. Like the Pig, though, he quickly becomes very flustered when under attack. He is not cruel to his workers, but he is quick to criticise his troops when something goes wrong. He also hasn't mastered the art of wearing a suit of armour and the face shield part of the helm keeps falling down over his head at the most inappropriate times. Castles and Strategies The Rat is considered to be one of the weakest characters in the game. Stronghold In the original Stronghold, the Rat is an underling of the Wolf. He is supporting you in the very beginning, however he becomes more frightened and jealous as you become more and powerful. Finally, he turns against you and tries to remove you from your seat of power, but in a final siege, he is vanquished. The Rat builds humble castles with very weak defense. They have few buildings and are not productive either. However, being reckless or careless towards his people, he sends hordes of cheap units to the enemy, rather sacrificing them than having any success. Stronghold Crusader The Rat appears at a second time in Crusader, without much change of his behaviour and castle management. His overall weakness is trivial. Economy The Rat has a simple economy based on apple gathering and lumbering wood. He also constructs a stone quarry and a low number of workshops to supply his army with weapons. He buys weapons in small numbers when lacking them in the armoury. He has low taxes and a good reserve. He has a low population so not much food is consumed. The Rat doesn't use much stone for walls and his troops are cheap to hire, meaning that the simple economy serves the Rat well. Offense The Rat is very inefficient in both attacking and harassment. He uses a small number of spearmen and archers (mostly sending them one by one) to distract enemy workers, this can be annoying at the start of a game if farms and quarries are not well defended. When it comes to attacking a castle, the Rat uses a brute force of spearmen and archers in a big group. Unlike the Snake, the archers are not a danger to archers on walls as they are few and deployed in tight formation. He also does not use any siege equipment, so he is just lacking any success against a mediocre defense. He does however, usually attack earlier in a game than any other AI lord, so his initial attacks can be annoyance to his enemies if they are slow to completely defend their castle. Eventually if he has enough gold, the Rat has the capability to build up large armies exceeding 100 spearmen, but there are still only a few archers to accompany them. Defense The rodent builds castles with random shapes and layout. Sometimes he encloses all of his buildings, but most of the time they are just left out in the open. His walls are fortified with or without any towers and single archers are spread out on wall sections. A group of spearmen patrols the Lord and important areas of the castle. There is one defensive advantage with the Rat's castle design. This is the fact he does not usually situate his bowmen on towers, but rather on the walls. This means that his enemies cannot leave towers in a permanent crumbled state, unlike with other AI characters in the game, to prevent his archers from ever firing upon them again. How to deal with Defense There's not too much to mention against the Rat's struggles to attack. A group of missile units (even slingers) handle the spearmen and the archers without problem. Moat can be used instead of the walls to conserve stone. Offense The same applies to the 'siege' force against the Rat. There are many alternatives, the two most common: *A small group of swordsmen or assassins may break into the castle, ignoring the defenders. *A medium group of horse archers picks off enemy archers, while encircling the fort. Later then, the barracks and market is demolished with area attacks to prevent recruitment. Finally, the drastically weakened Lord can be fired at (without attack here or the horsemen will fire in the same time, minimizing hit chance) until his health is depleted. *You can place a small group of archers near his farms and if possible near his castle.This is a good strategy as the archers will shoot the farmers and any of De Puces people that are in range. This can be done at any time, although you should probably wait for the Rat to move his troops out of his castle first (when he is trying to launch an attack) if he is doing particularly well and has over 200 troops in total. Quotes Note: the Rat will command his servant to carry messages, when he is the player's ally. For the Rat's quotes see: Quotes:The Rat For the servant's messages see: Quotes:Servant Navigation ru:Крыса Category:Male Characters Category:Antagonists Category:Stronghold Category:Stronghold Crusader